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Assault suspect’s scars used as evidence

In a Mesa County trial that has included numerous sex toys as evidence, the defendant on Thursday was allowed by a judge to briefly wear shorts to show scars on his upper legs to the jury.

Rodney Eddy, 68, of Mesa, is on trial fighting 36 felony charges related to an alleged five-year, secret, sexual affair with a girl who lived in his home.

The girl, who is now 20, testified last week during the trial that Eddy did not have any defects, moles or tattoos on his penis or butt. The woman testified that she regularly had sex with Rodney Eddy starting in 2003 when she was 14, but she didn’t tell anyone about the incidents until after she was 18 because she didn’t think at the time that anything was wrong with the relationship.

Mesa County District Judge Valerie Robison allowed Eddy’s defense attorneys, Michelle Devlin and Andrew Nolan, to have their client show jurors scars on his upper thighs as nontestimonial evidence. Eddy’s scars were also shown to jurors during the trial via video and photographs. Robison denied prosecutors’ arguments that Eddy’s display was cumulative or redundant and that prosecutors should be able to cross-examine Eddy because of the display.

Eddy’s wife, Dory Rodney, testified Thursday that the girl was welcome in the Eddys’ home when she lived there between 2004 and 2008 and that she and Rodney were in the process of adopting her.

“Our thought for (the alleged victim) was she could do whatever she wanted as long as it was going to make her happy,” Dory Eddy testified.

Dory and Rodney Eddy nurtured the girl’s desires to first become a veterinarian and later to join the Air Force, Dory Eddy testified. The couple sometimes insisted that the girl call and visit her biological parents, who lived in Grand Junction, because the girl regularly refused to make contact with them, Dory Eddy testified.

Rodney Eddy, a former District 51 substitute teacher and former deacon of the Mesa View Bible Church, was arrested on allegations of sexual assault as a pattern of abuse and by a person in a position of trust in December 2008.